


Ghost Steps

by Pteropoda (SilentP)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mystical Elements, Childhood in the Shimada, Dragon Hanzo Shimada, Gen, The Shimada Clan - Freeform, Yakuza, Young Genji Shimada, Young Hanzo Shimada
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentP/pseuds/Pteropoda
Summary: Genji wasn't a ninja yet, but he had a nose for secrets and a taste for showing up his cousins. What other reason did he need to break his father's rules?
Relationships: Genji Shimada & Hanzo Shimada
Kudos: 8





	Ghost Steps

Only five steps from the top of the stairway, a board creaked under Genji’s foot. 

Genji's breath stuck in his throat as he went stiff. Standing frozen with his weight balanced awkwardly between two stairs was difficult, especially in his starched shirt and pants, but he didn't dare put more weight down and risk the step creaking again. He waited, his heartbeat pounding in his throat, but no one appeared at the top of the stairs, and the echo of voices from below didn't change. 

Slowly, Genji let the air empty from his lungs. Maybe it was a good thing none of his cousins had joined him. Himari was bad at sneaking, and Kaito would have freaked out at the first hint of trouble.

Alone, Genji was sneakier than all of them, even Reo, who was two years older than him. The creaky floorboards of the Shimada Castle wouldn't stop Genji from investigating the stairs at the back of the dojo. 

His father had taught him how to move silently, and Genji followed that teaching now. Slowly, bracing himself against the walls of the narrow stairway, he eased his weight forward onto the next step, keeping his feet at the seam where the wall met the stairs. He rolled his foot from heel to toe until his weight rested entirely on the creaky stair. 

It didn't make any more noise, and Genji grinned to himself. Four more steps, and he would be further into the dojo than he'd ever been before, and definitely breaking the rules. 

Breaking the rules would only get him in trouble if he got caught, though. With renewed determination Genji set his sights on the next four stairs. 

None of them creaked under his slight weight, but he climbed slowly, using the careful movement to sneak a look at the corridor ahead. The lights inset at the base of the walls were dimmed, leaving the hall in shadow. Genji didn't mind. It would keep him from being spotted before he could see any of the house security that might be patrolling up here while the family celebrated down below. 

There was still no sign of anyone when Genji crested the top of the stairs, but the far end was noticeably brighter, so Genji crept down the hallway just as sneakily as he had climbed the stairs. He listened for a few moments before he finally poked his head around the corner. 

This hallway was empty too, and only slightly brighter. There were a few doors along the hallway's length, but Genji's attention was taken up by the shoji door at the end, lit from inside with a soft light. There was a shadow in front of the rice paper, but it wasn’t moving and the shape was too indistinct for Genji to tell what made it. 

Genji held his breath as he eased his way closer. There was no sound in the hallway other than the feather-soft slide of his uwabaki on the floor. His heart pounded through his eardrums, but he could detect no movement from inside the room. He slid up to the side of the door to prevent his outline from showing through the paper. Still there was no hint of sound or movement from inside. 

Whatever was in this room had to be the reason Tou-san had forbidden Genji and all of his cousins from coming up here. Maybe it was where they kept all of the family's weapons. Genji knew that Tou-san and Kaa-san kept guns in their apartments, in a safe in their bedroom. He knew because Tou-san had shown it to him and told him he could never play with anything inside that box, even if it was open. That box couldn't hold enough weapons for everyone in the Shimada family, though, and it definitely couldn't fit something like a katana. There were sword racks in the dojo, but those were either empty or held simple bokken. 

If he could find a gun or a wakizashi he could sneak it back down to the dojo to show his cousins, and then maybe Reo wouldn't pretend that he was better than everyone else just because he'd started his sword training already, or call Genji a liar or a coward. 

There was still no sound from inside the room, and Genji's patience was beginning to wear thin. Shuffling forward on his knees, he put his hand to the shoji frame and pressed ever so slightly. 

He only meant to slide it open a centimeter or two, enough to take a quick peek into the room without being seen, but the door stuck at his first push, then rattled open an entire hand’s width. Genji froze, his heart pounding. 

There was a boy in the room staring right at him. 

The boy was wearing a dark formal kimono and haori, and he had to be a Shimada because he looked just like Tou-san and all of Genji's cousins, except that his face and arms were all covered with strange blue patches that glittered in the low light. 

Genji bit his tongue as he jerked back, slamming his elbow into the wall as he did so. What followed was a yelp of both surprise and pain; a mistake that had Genji scrambling to get his feet under him, knowing he was caught but trying to make an escape anyway. 

The sound seemed to unfreeze the other boy, who extended an arm in Genji's direction only to leave it hanging awkwardly in the air. 

"Wait!" the boy hissed. 

Genji stilled again. He watched with wide eyes as the other boy blinked at him in surprise, then slowly lowered his hand. "How did you get up here?" the boy asked in a quiet voice. 

Genji glanced around and realized that he was still sitting out in the hallway where anyone could see him. He looked back to the other boy. There was something weird about him, not just the blue patches on his face and arms. His eyes looked weird, and his fingers seemed too long. But he wasn't  _ scary _ weird, just weird, and he seemed just as surprised to see someone else up here as Genji was. 

Genji made his decision. A ninja was fearless; a ninja also didn't make stupid mistakes like sitting in a hallway where security could find him. 

"I snuck up," he said. "If I come in, you won't eat me, right?"

The other boy blinked again, then made a face that wrinkled his nose. "Why would I do that?" he said, sounding so utterly offended that Genji broke out into a grin. 

"Okay," he chirped. On his knees, he shuffled into the room and slid the shoji closed behind him with a quiet thump. When he looked back at the boy, he found he was being stared at. The other boy's eyes were definitely weird. Something about them, the shape or the sheen of them, reminded Genji a little of a cat. 

Genji opened his mouth to ask about it, but the other boy spoke first. "Why did you sneak up here?" 

He took a moment to answer, distracted by trying to get a closer look at the blue things stuck to the other boy's skin. It looked like glitter or paint, but there was so much of it that he didn't think it was. "I was looking for the guns," he said finally.

"Guns?" 

Genji nodded, grinning. "My cousins bet that I'd never make it up here because Tou-san says we're not allowed, but I told them I could, so I need proof." 

The other boy's nose wrinkled again. It made him look like an adult. "They don't keep the guns up here. They're all locked up under the dojo." 

"Oh," Genji said, deflated. He shuffled on his knees, eyes down. "Well… I dunno. I'll think of something." He chewed his lip, darting another look at the boy and his strange features, and wondered if it would be rude to ask him to come down to vouch for Genji. Besides, hanging out downstairs had to be better than sitting in this room all along. And why was he here, anyway, when there was a party happening downstairs? 

"Oh," Genji repeated, this time focusing on the other boy's face. "What's your name?" 

The boy stared at Genji, this time biting his lip. Genji could see a hint of sharp canine teeth. His own were sharp too, sharp in a way that he liked to think of as fangs, but this boy's incisors were longer and sharper than Genji thought a person's were supposed to be. 

"I'm not supposed to say," he said eventually. His hands were clenched tightly on top of his thighs. "Especially not to someone I don't know." 

"You can't know someone if you don't introduce yourself first," Genji pouted. "And if you're here, then you have to be a Shimada. Tou-san wouldn't let anyone else in during a party. And if you're a Shimada, that means we're family." 

Genji was the one who bit his lip this time, considering the other boy. Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, then walked over to the other boy and extended his hand. "I'm Shimada Genji. My father is Shimada Sojiro, and my mother is Shimada Nanako. What's your name?" 

The other boy still hesitated, but Genji, struck by a sudden thought, leaned in even closer. "Hey, is your name Hanzo?" 

The boy jerked. "You should leave," he said again, looking between Genji and the door without meeting Genji's gaze. 

"It is, isn't it?" 

The other boy still didn't look at him, but his shoulders rose up towards his ears like he was uncomfortable. Genji could hardly hold himself back. It didn't matter that the other boy—Hanzo, he had to be—hadn't accepted his offer of a handshake. "That makes you my brother! That's so cool," Genji said. "I thought you were way older since Tou-san said you're doing work for the clan. Where'd you get the scales and stuff? Will I get them when I'm older, too?" 

Hanzo's face pulled tight as he leaned back, but whatever he'd opened his mouth to say was lost when he went eerily still. His eyes darted toward the door, pupils wide. 

It only took Genji a moment to register the noise that must have alarmed Hanzo. In the silence of the little room above the dojo, the quiet creak of the stairs carried like a shot. It wasn’t just the one creak, either. Genji could hear the quiet murmur of voices drawing closer.

Genji met Hanzo's still-wide eyes, struck by the sudden and terrifying realization that if he didn't do something fast, he was about to be in So Much Trouble. 

His first thought was to go back downstairs, but he'd just run right into whoever was coming up. Even if he could make it to one of the closed doors that lined the corridor, they were probably locked. If he stepped beyond the shoji door, there would be nowhere to hide. 

"Here," Hanzo hissed, rising abruptly. He wobbled a little as he got to his feet but grabbed Genji by the wrist and pulled him along with surprising strength. Genji followed, caught by the realization that Hanzo was a head taller than him. His hair was long, but not smooth and shiny like Kaa-san’s. 

Hanzo let go of Genji to slide open a panel at the back of the room and hiss, "hide in here until they're gone." 

Genji immediately ducked inside. There wasn't much space in the cubby, filled as it was with a pile of blankets and a thick folded futon, but Genji squished it aside to make room and turned to look up at his brother. 

"Don't make any noise," Hanzo said urgently. "I'll let you know when it's safe to come out." 

Then he slid the door shut. 

Genji expected the door to be closed completely, but a thread of light remained. Genji let out a breath and squirmed forward in his squishy prison until he could peer out of the tiny gap. It didn’t give him the best view of the room, but he could see just enough of Hanzo to guess that his brother had gone back to kneeling in the front of the room. There was a little shrine set up there, Genji realized, with one of the family’s dragon paintings hanging behind it. 

Hanzo sat the way Tou-san did—back straight, shoulders stiff, perfectly in seiza. It was nothing at all like Genji, who couldn’t imagine sitting that uncomfortably for that long, especially when there was no one around, but Hanzo held still like it was nothing as the shuffling feet and murmuring voices came closer. 

From his little closet Genji couldn’t see the shoji doors, but he heard when it slid open. Soft conversations continued as the sound of feet on tatami filled the room. Genji recognized the voices of several of the Elders. Unseen, he grimaced. Was this just another boring meeting? 

Then Tou-san came into view. He towered over Hanzo, looking stern and severe in his formal kimono with his hands tucked into his sleeves. "Are you ready?" Tou-san asked. 

Genji held his breath, but Hanzo only nodded. He didn't even glance toward the cubby where Genji was hiding. 

Tou-san nodded back at him, then stood behind Hanzo, right in front of the shrine. The soft voices quickly began to die down. Genji felt a little thrill of excitement despite himself and pressed closer to the door. 

"Let us begin," Tou-san said. He leaned over the shrine and lit a stick of incense. Genji quickly covered his face with his shirt. The smell of incense was already growing thick and cloying, and Genji couldn’t afford to sneeze. 

Then Tou-san clapped his hands together and bowed over them, the same way he did for the  _ kami dana _ in their apartments or at the big shrine in Hanamura. He started murmuring something, too. 

This was even worse than a meeting, Genji realized. At least at a meeting he could hope that an argument would break out the way they often did with the Elders. Prayers were just dull. 

Even Hanzo seemed a little bored, Genji thought. He was sitting just as stiffly, but his hands were pressed against his thighs and his head was lowered. Genji thought he might even have his eyes closed. 

Tou-san eventually moved back away from the little shrine, but he didn't step aside to let Hanzo take a turn. Instead, Goro Oji-san moved forward. 

It kept on and on like that; one of the Elders stepped forward to pray while Hanzo sat to the side. None of the Elders even glanced at him, and Hanzo didn't move at all. Left with little else to do, Genji took to watching Hanzo for signs of life; the occasional twitch of his hands, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed. With the blue markings that decorated his skin, he looked like a statue unless Genji watched closely. 

Genji stared at the patches for a while. Tou-san had always said that Hanzo didn't live with them because he had to do important work for the dragons. Genji didn’t know what work for the dragons would give Hanzo scales and cat eyes, but he could come up with a million guesses, each one cooler than the last. The only problem was that he couldn't ask Tou-san about it later, because if he did Tou-san would know that he'd broken the rules. 

He could probably ask Hanzo. Maybe Hanzo would let Genji work for the dragons, too. If it meant that he could get scales and dragon eyes and claws, it had to be cooler than learning from tutors and going to school. 

Then again, Genji thought as he bit back a yawn, if it involved this much sitting in shrines, maybe it wasn't. 

Genji leaned back into the futon, slowly stretching his legs and arms to keep them from falling asleep. He wondered what his cousins were doing. Did they think he'd run away, or did they know that he'd been trapped upstairs? Were they waiting for him to come back, chastised after having been caught? 

Maybe he could still convince Hanzo to sneak down with him once Tou-san and the Elders were all gone. 

The sudden sound of a dozen clapping hands made Genji jerk. Swallowing a yawn, he rubbed at his eyes and leaned back toward the crack in the door. He still couldn't see much, but Hanzo was still in view and he'd finally lifted his head. The Elders were all talking now, in quiet but noticeable voices. He heard the slide of the shoji screen opening and the creak of the floorboards as people left the room. 

Genji could have cheered. He pushed himself further out of the squishy grasp of the futon and waited for Hanzo to give him a signal that it was safe to come out. 

Hanzo didn't do anything like that. He just sat in the same place he'd been the entire meeting, even as the sound of voices and footsteps faded into the distance. His butt had to be numb by now, Genji thought. 

"You did well tonight," Tou-san's voice said. Genji could see a hint of his shoulder and arm, mostly hidden by the bulk of his haori sleeve. 

"Thank you, Otou-san," Hanzo said. His voice was quiet, and his head was still bowed. He looked like he was staring down at his hands. 

"What of the dragons? Are they satisfied?" 

Hanzo hesitated, but eventually he lifted his head to nod at Tou-san. "They're restless, but they're pleased," he said. 

"Good," Tou-san said. "Well done." It didn't  _ seem _ like he meant that Hanzo had done an excellent job. Tou-san always hugged Genji whenever he'd done a good job, or ruffled his hair and smiled at him. 

Maybe it was because Hanzo was older. He seemed much more adult than Genji, older than any of his cousins, almost like an adult. He was even more serious than Kenma, who had said this year that he didn't want to play with babies anymore and had gone to hang out with the older cousins and ignored the rest of them, especially his little sister Himari. 

"Get a good night's rest," Tou-san said. "You will have training early tomorrow." 

This time, Hanzo's only response was a nod. For a while, he sat in place. Tou-san must have left, but Genji couldn't hear any sign of it, not even ages later when Hanzo let out a long sigh and finally stood. 

Genji scrambled out of the closet as soon as Hanzo walked over to it. He groaned and stretched his arms over his head. "That took forever!" he complained. "How could you stand it?" 

Hanzo stood there with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. "You should go now," he said. "They'll notice you're gone, and then you'll get us in trouble." 

"But—" Genji protested, then realized he didn't have anything to protest. His cousins definitely knew how long he'd been gone, even if the grown-ups hadn't realized. It probably wouldn't be long before they started really searching for him. "You should come with me." 

Hanzo looked at him like he was stupid. "No," he said. 

"You could—" 

"No," Hanzo repeated. "It's a terrible idea. I'm not going." 

Genji huffed. "Fine! But at least let me take an incense holder or something!" 

"That's even worse! No!" 

"I promise I'll bring it back!" 

"Just go!" Hanzo shouted. 

Both of them flinched at the unexpected volume, and Hanzo stepped back, his fists clenched at his sides. There was something creepy about his eyes again. They seemed too bright, almost glowing with an unearthly intensity. Genji took a step back himself. 

"Go away," Hanzo said, "or I'll tell on you." 

"No, you won't!" Genji hissed.

"Yes, I will!" Hanzo hissed right back, taking a step forward. 

"Fine!" Genji turned toward the door and stormed away. "Stay up here all alone! I don't need a brother who's stupid and boring." 

He didn't wait for Hanzo to come up with a retort, he just rushed out of the room, leaving the shoji open behind him. Genji was halfway down the hall when he heard it slide shut. Hanzo didn't even try to slam it. 

For some reason, that made it worse. Genji stomped down the stairs, this time. There was no point in sneaking now, not if Hanzo was going to sell him out, so he stormed his way down into the dojo.

It was empty. 

Genji growled in frustration and kicked one of the empty sword racks. It clattered unsatisfyingly but didn't break. He could hear the sound of voices from the main hall, which meant that everyone had gone ahead without him. He kicked the sword rack again. 

"Genji?" 

It was Kaa-san’s voice. For a moment Genji considered not answering, but Kaa-san would find him anyway. She was good at that. 

"Here," he called. 

He heard her step through the doorway, then turn around the corner, but he didn’t lift his head. "There you are. The party is starting, everyone is waiting to start dinner. Where have you been?" 

"I don't want to go," Genji grumbled, staring down at his uwabaki. "I'm not hungry." 

His mother sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. "You still need to go, even if you're not hungry," she said. "But your father asked the cooks to make your favorite, and it would disappoint him if you don't eat. And it would disappoint me if you didn't come and try to have fun when your lessons tomorrow morning have been canceled." 

Genji glanced up at her. "You mean I can stay up as late as I want?" 

"As late as you want," Kaa-san said, then squeezed his shoulder. "So let's go and be good hosts, hm?" 

Genji's stomach growled its betrayal. "...Fine," he muttered. "But I won't have fun." 

"Of course not, Genji," she said. Genji didn't have to look up to know she was smiling. 

They were almost to the main hall when Genji finally looked up at her. "Kaa-san," he asked slowly. "Why do Tou-san and the Elders have meetings above the dojo?" 

Her hand squeezed his shoulder again. "Oh, Genji, don't worry about that," she told him. "You'll learn about it when you're older."


End file.
